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I take it then that you do not consider the US to be the greatest civilisation in history?
And then there is the apparent anomaly of individuals with no limits on their power being lauded by history, Caesar, Alexander, Ghenghis Khan, the Pharoahs etc. Perhaps noone has got the balance right yet between authority and personal freedom.
Discuss :biggrin1:
Well- I think the America of the 40s thru the 80s was the most advnaced incarnation of the greatest civilization.
Looking aorund the world, what you find is that the most successful democracies... the only nations that really "get" the idea of maximum perosnal liberty COUPLED with maximum personal responsibility... are ALL former colonies of Great Britain.
It is not an accident that the nation that came up with the Magna Carta and the Scottish enlightment is the nation that has left the most enduring mark on places as diverse as Hong Kong and Boston.
( the Spanish, for example, never really understood the concept, and none of their former colonies are much more than states ruled by bribery and graft.)
I think the Critical Leap made by America was the end of aristocracy and the separation of church and State.
When you look at the America that wowed the world in WW1 and WW2- that helped rebuild the world after the war, and that has steadfastly pushed the world toward greater freedoms and better relations...
That was an America that had a very well balanced mix of socialized systems to meet the needs of the people, AND well regulated capitalism that encouraged enterprise and generated enormous wealth.
That was WHY iot was so successful...
However- since the re-emergence of "free market" lunacy and the co-opting of religious fanaticism that the republicans used to gain power... we have seen a marked decline in both American prestige, and American fortunes.
The willful muddling of religion into our government, and the insanity of unregulated markets has led us, and allowed us to lead the world to the brink of this disaster.
The real insanity is the same sense of moral certainty that marks ALL dogmas... bith religious and political.
The very idea that any ONE idea, be it capitalism, or socialism, or communism, is sufficient to make stable something as complex as the world economy is naive, sophomoric, ignorant, and plainly dangerous.
How much suffering ensues from certainty in the tenets of communism- or captialism? History is rife with it.
How much damage does it do to our national identity and sense of each other as fellow citizens when we DEMONIZE, with moral certainty, the beliefs of the Left or the Right?
We have allowed our national discourse to become polarized... allowed ourselves to be played like calliopes....
It is particularly bad when those who ARE conservative are so blinded by dogmatic association with one group as to be incapable of even recognizing when that group CEASES to be conservative in its actions.
it has gotten to the point of "free market" now being ASSUMED to be the cornerstone of what it means to be 'conservative"... rather than to have how conservative an Idea is be judged by its EFFECTS.
No- I do not admire the cultures of the Hun, nor imperial Rome.
Thus far- Western style democratic Republics in the Anglo/american mold are the freest and most tolerant societies earth has yet seen.
But we are still changing... the question is, into what?
Will be be an even freer, even fairer society?
Or will we allow the mean and timid temperaments of the fearful and hate filled drive the directions of this culture?
At some point in the near future, the world will have to come to grips with 11 billion souls ALL wanting a car, a house, a flat screen TV and a computer.
And come to grips with the limited resources, limited food and water, that will mean that there will be little place left for the people who want way more than their fair share.
Either the more affluent figure out a way to SHARE that affluence... or the teeming poor will simply come and TAKE it... as they did to Rome, as they Did to France...
Conservatives, today, live in the delusion that things can keep going this way for ever... that they can RESIST change...
But evolution drives those that can not adapt to extinction.
Can America Adapt to a fairer future where we DON'T take far more resources than is our share?
I don't know... I do know, with the example of long history, that if we can not stop the backwards forces of neo-conservatism...that America will cease to matter in the world... and that we will go the way of the dodo...